


planetarium

by fadewords



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: (bonus adhd jesse but that doesn't come up asmuch), Autistic Character, Gen, autistic harrison wells, no caps bc hashtag aesthetic & also caps are for squares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 02:09:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14392017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadewords/pseuds/fadewords
Summary: "I was thinking earlier today about the time that you were four. I took you to the planetarium, just you and me. I remember because it was the first time I took you out all by myself. The planetarium was crowded, and you held my hand for dear life, or maybe it was the other way around. But it was in the Mars exhibit that I lost you. Panic."





	planetarium

harrison wells doesn’t take his daughter anywhere by himself until she is four years old.

(he doesn’t have cause to mention it very often, but, years later, in passing, he mentions it to joe west. and joe laughs, a short sound, half-amused, half-incredulous.

“what, never?” he asks.

“never,” harry snaps, because he just said that, and what does it matter anyway?

“too busy?” joe says, in a manner harry is positive joe thinks is shrewd--or maybe it’s flat-out disapproving. probably, he decides, it’s meant as a bit of both.

“something like that,” he says, and grabs a marker and starts scribbling equations to indicate the conversation is finished.)

back on earth-2, his earth-1, over a decade in the past, it’s nothing like that.

he isn’t too busy. he’s never--he’s very, very rarely too busy.

he’s just also never alone.

tess is always there--sometimes at his side, but most often holding jesse’s other hand and smiling.

they go places together, the three of them. parks, zoos, museums--so many museums. all the time, always, together, hand in hand. and they walk, and they talk, and they laugh, and they eat more ice cream than is strictly medically advisable, and they go home and often collapse in a pile on the couch, limbs humming with the sort of heat that comes from a very long, very satisfying day out.

and it’s nice. it’s good. it’s right. there’s no reason to do it any other way.

until jesse is four and wants to go to the planetarium and so does he, but tess has to work. ordinarily they’d wait, go as a family--but there’s limited availability, and jesse’s so excited, and--

so he takes her alone.

she clings to him as they walk through the crowds.

( _held my hand_ _for dear life_ , he says, years later, _or maybe it was the other way around_.)

it’s a moment of honesty the likes of which he can only allow because he’s not talking to her face--not really--just to the memory of her--no, to the concept, she’s not dead, not dead, and won’t be if he has anything to say about it and he does--and to an old watch. still, even then, even to a concept and watch and no one and nothing else, he tempers the truth. he says “maybe.”)

in the moment, there is no maybe about it.

in the rush of the crowd, he grips her hand so hard he has to remind himself to stop, breathe, relax, loosen his fingers. he doesn’t want to hurt her. the last thing he wants is to hurt her.

so he loosens his grip just a little and sticks his free hand into his pocket and clenches that into a fist instead. tighter, tighter, til he leaves little crescent marks in his palm. then he unclenches his fist and straightens his shoulders and smiles down at little jesse.

her eyes are big and wide as always, and shining in what could be fear but is probably, probably excitement. she tugs him forward and yes, it is excitement, speeding her along to the next room and he follows, half-stooped, half-stumbling, with a soft, wry grin.

she asks questions a mile a minute and he answers them and she understands and she responds back cleverly and insightfully, so insightfully, his little jesse quick, and then they’re off again, to the next room and the next and the tension in his shoulders is just starting to loosen as he glances around at the mars exhibit and then back down at her ready to ask her to repeat the--

the--

where is she.

she’s--

she’s not--

she was--

she was just--

she just asked him a question she was just here she was--

she’s--

gone.

harrison draws himself up tall, jams one fist in his pocket and holds the other hand stiff and flat at his side and he starts walking straight into the suddenly-swarming-rather-than-milling crowd. she can’t have got far. he’ll find her. he’ll find her.

he does not find her. she has gotten far. he can’t spot her in the crowd. can’t spot anything in the crowd except the crowd itself, and--

he alerts security, has them lock the place down. gets every guard in the building searching for her, scouring every inch, every corner. they will find her, they will find her, he will find her, there’s no way he won’t, and if he doesn’t--he will. and when he gets his hands on whoever took her--

he keeps walking. searching. clenching his fist tight tight tight--and then his other hand, his free hand, the hand outside his pocket the hand he’s going to place on jesse’s shoulder any second now--that hand becomes a fist too. claws first, for an indeterminable amount of time, and then a fist and he raises it to his head gets inches from his forehead and--

jerks it back down, jams it in a pocket. not here, not here. he will not hit himself here. not now. not in front of strangers and potentially, any second now, jesse.

jesse has never seen that. he will not ever let her see that. not ever, not ever.

so he jams his fist deeper in his pocket and grinds his teeth together and clenches them hard in a way that will definitely hurt later and probably cause dental problems besides but is _better_ than _hitting himself_ in _public_ \--and keeps looking.

he isn’t sure how long it’s been. half an hour, at least. more? less?

a glance at his watch tells him it has been precisely four minutes and thirteen seconds. that can’t be right, but the watch doesn’t lie.

he keeps looking, deeper and deeper into the crowds, going from room to room. people press too close, arms brushing against his own and making the skin between his shoulderblades squirm, and they laugh and they gasp and they talk and their professional heels clack on the floor and make his ears pulse and how do they wear shoes like that doesn’t it get tiresome--and they move too fast and he can’t focus with everything going at once and something needs to stop.

but nothing does.

he tries to call jesse’s name--has a dozen times now at least--but can’t. the one name he’s never had trouble saying, the one that feels more right on his tongue than even his own, the one he repeated over and over and over when she was born, staring down at her little, wrinkled face and her perfect eyes and her tiny, tiny fingernails, the name he helped _choose_ , the--he can’t say it.

he isn’t entirely sure he can say anything, at the moment. he’s positive he doesn’t want to try.

he keeps looking instead, faster now, nearly running, despite all the looks he’s getting, the looks he can _feel_ on him like spots of magma--

\--and then she’s found.

runs to her, hugs her tight, doesn’t let go til she protests and then does all at once, arms flying up bent at the elbows, hands hovering in front of his shoulders, frozen, stuck, pacifying and apologetic and alarmed and guilty all at once.

he swallows, and finds his mouth is dryer than the sahara. finds his throat is approximately three times narrower than it should be. finds he’s out of breath, finds he can’t seem to rectify that. finds.

finds.

he’d really like to sit down. leave. take jesse home, make her lunch, pile her with blankets and lock the doors and sit beside her and watch the marine biology documentary again.

but jesse--calm again already, though he can still see the tear tracks not-yet-dried on her cheeks, shining in the too-loud lights--turns and stares at another exhibit across the way and turns back and her eyes are shining bright as the tear-tracks and maybe brighter and he can’t say no.

so he nods and he smiles and they go to that exhibit too, even though it’s too bright and the moving screen is too close and he feels like he’s going to fall in, and she stares awestruck and he doesn’t let go of her hand the entire time, not for a second.

he doesn’t hear a word of anything that gets said through the rest of their visit. or rather, he does, but the words frequently make very little sense.

he answers jesse as best he can, based on guesswork and what he knows of her and the things she’s looking at and the shape of her mouth as it forms the words, and others he answers with tight smiles and nods and head-tilts, pulled out from cabinets he built years ago, stocked full of things like these for moments like these.

and it works. no one notices a thing, not even when someone drops a handful of coins twenty feet away and he has to physically restrain himself from flinching.

it works and finally they leave and he buys jesse ice cream on the way home because he promised. he buys himself ice cream, too, but he doesn’t eat it, it just melts in the little cup as they go, and when she asks if she can have it he just hands it to her wordlessly, and though it’s too much sugar, though it’s bad for her teeth, though it’s not the right thing, it’s worth it to hear her squeal of delight--and better than letting the ice cream go to waste.

and then somehow they’re home, in front of the front door and he’s got to unlock it and he’s dropped his key.

he tries again. doesn’t drop it this time, but his hand shakes and misses the slot and it takes a few tries before--

there. door unlocked, jesse ushered in. himself stepped in. door locked behind him. wall, leaned against. eyes closed.

shoulders droop. foosteps heading towards him--eyes open, shoulders straight.

jesse.

eyes bright and content and a little--a little off. worried? still upset, from earlier, even after--after the extra exhibits and the ice cream? and the extra ice cream?

he asks is she okay, and she says yes. he asks does she want lunch, or did the ice cream spoil her appetite and she shrieks "lunch" and he can’t help himself he winces.

and she says "lunch," again, softer. and sorry.

and he grins tiredly and ruffles her hair and "there’s nothing to be sorry about." he makes her mac and cheese, careful, slow, measuring the water exactly and stirring methodically the whole time it cooks even though he knows, he knows the instructions say to stir periodically, he’s read them at least a dozen times if not more, but it doesn’t hurt to stir more it keeps the noodles from getting stuck to the bottom of the pot and anyway and anyway the stirring is nice.

it’s nice, and it doesn’t hurt, so he does it.

and as he does, he thinks back over the outing--the entire trip, in full, though lingering, of course, lingering over the minutes--minutes, though it felt like hours--that he’d lost sight of-- _lost_ jesse, point blank. lingering over those minutes for the seven minutes it takes for the noodles to cook and in those seven minutes, in those seven minutes, he comes to a resolution.

he will never lose jesse like that again. he will never let anything happen to her, not ever again, not once, not for as long as he lives. never.

no matter what--no matter how far she goes from him, or how long, or how fast--he will always find her, and he will always protect her.

he will keep her safe.

he mulls over the promise as he drains the noodles, lets it sink into his bones as he mixes in the cheese and feels the headache recede and air settle in his lungs like it might actually belong there instead of like it’s trespassing.

serves the meal, a huge pile on jesse’s plate and smaller on his own. softens as she flaps her hands delightedly, so fast they blur, so much like him at that age, but twice as bright.

he hums in response.

she’ll be fine, his little jesse quick.

he’ll make sure of it.


End file.
